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Title: The Courage to Be (Yale Nota Bene) by Paul Tillich, Peter J. Gomes ISBN: 0-300-08471-4 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: August, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.59 (17 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Courage to Despair
Comment: Tillich's ultimate concern is what determines our being or non-being. The "shock of nonbeing" and the ensuing anxiety allows Tillich to categorize three types of anxiety (fate and death, emptiness, and guilt). I thought his history of anxiety, starting with the Stoics ("the only real alternative to Christianity in the Western world") was remarkable (though at times a rough read). Influenced by Heidegger and Kierkegaard("to confront his existence alone") he drives on to the inevitable search for God. For Tillich, the "Courage to Be" is partly the courage to despair, and avoid the "Neurosis is a away of avoiding non-being by avoiding being". He is also influenced by Freud and psychoanalysis (called "depth psychology" in the book), which in our day of Prozac and behavioral psychology is refreshing.
The nature of the discussions, being, nonbeing, subjectivity, objectivity make for difficult reading with double negatives (eg. "Nonbeing is no threat because finite being is, in the last analysis, nonbeing"). If one can wade through the language, there a lot of insight.
Rating: 5
Summary: This book is a real eye opener!
Comment: Though not an easy read, The Courage to Be is definitely worth the struggle. I'll admit that I originally read this book as required for a class, but I have to say that it was one of the best experiences of my academic career. I am an avid reader, but was glad to have my professor's guidance and class discussions to help me see and understand things I might not have otherwise. I don't think Tillich has to be lumped into any kind of category in order to be worth reading-- his ideas transcend any one category. After reading this book, I knew what I had always felt about God and religion but never had the words for. The Courage to Be made me the Tillich fan I am today, and though it can be frustrating at times, I wouldn't trade my copy for anything!
Rating: 5
Summary: The spirit and the machine
Comment: Tillich's book makes a number of points very clearly, but the
principal point of the book is obscured by round-about language.
In the last chaper Tillich speaks of the "God above God". He writes concerning the God who is not above God: "He deprives me of my subjectivity . . . God appears as an invincible tyrant, the being in contrast with whom all other beings are without freedom and subjectivity. . . . This is the god Nietzsche said had to be killed because nobody can tolerate being made into the mere object of absolute power. This is the deepest root of atheism." The God not above God is the Jewish image of God divorced from anthropomorphic aspects. He does not state this, but it is clear it is what he means. He speaks of Bergson's fight against the tyranny of spacial relationships. He states elsewhere in the chapter that: " The God above God is present, although hidden, in every devine-human encounter. Biblical religion, as well as Protestant theology are aware of the paradoxical character of this encounter." If one removes the anthropomorphic elements from the Old Testament God the result is how Albert Einstein describes the Jewish God: "The Jewish God is nothing more than the negation of superstition." This would of course be the combination of natural law and spacial relationships. Einstein goes on to say that the rest of God is imagination. Therefore, the God Tillich rejects is the physical laws and spacial relationships before which subjectivity is absurd in that it is simply a form of self-deception to be unaware of the laws which will, aware or un-aware, be obeyed. Therefore the individual as a subjectivity-having being is of necessity based upon ignorance. Keat's line "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" would be impossible were the God as natural law and spacial relationships embraced in a pure form. The "thing" would simply be a mass of some specific gravity, of
a particular set of dimensions, a given distance from the observer and so forth. Much of current Jewish theological argument is about this same point, rationalism (man is a part of a giant machine and everything else is self-deception) as opposed to the combination of the rationalst view with one of the universe of possible self-deceptions the view personified by Abraham's argument with God concerning the destruction of Sodom and the selecter of the Jewish people as chosen. The implication of Tillich's argument is also that visualization of God such as the One who argues with Abraham or selects a people is simply a form of self deception, one of the universe of forms of self deception which needs be employed or some other form substituted. Abraham argues with God, and it seems to make sense in the Bible. It would make no sense if anyone argued with gravity or that gravity selected one group over another. The Jews would be, as implied by the quote from Einstein, be more vulnerable to this need for self deception simply because persons of other groups would be more removed from the God of natural law and spacial relationships. It is part of the human condition, not at all unique to Judaism, but it would be subject to amplification among Jews because Judaism is a more mechanistic and therefore more efficient view of the universe. Being more efficient and therefore potentially more powerful, there would be greater opportunity for Jews to engage in behaviors which might create ill-feeling among others than would groups with less effieient mentalities. Tillich does not in any way say or imply that this is the only cause of self deception of course. Obviously, a realization of the true nature of the universe is necessary if great vulnerability is to be avoided. The acquiring of this realization without the need to find harmful self-deception is perhaps the greatest challange the world faces. Judaism has much to teach the world; it is time the world listened. Tillich points at least in the general direction of where the world needs to go, but he himself says that the correct balance between the subjective and the mechanistic is "Under the Cross."
Therefore, he, himself, points to the need for realization of combining a mechanistic core with a modifying but useful as opposed to harmful form of self deception, but does not embrace it. Tillish says that the purpose of the Christian clergy is to keep people from realizing the true, without self deception, relationship between man and the universe. He points to the road, but he will go no further.
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Title: Dynamics of Faith by Paul Tillich ISBN: 0060937130 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 16 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: I And Thou by Martin Buber ISBN: 0684717255 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1971 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Essential Tillich: An Anthology of the Writings of Paul Tillich by Paul Tillich, F. Forrester Church ISBN: 0226803430 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: September, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: A History of Christian Thought: From Its Judaic and Hellenistic Origins to Existentialism by Paul Tillich ISBN: 0671214268 Publisher: Touchstone Books Pub. Date: November, 1972 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality by Paul Tillich ISBN: 0226803414 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: June, 1964 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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